The Dynamic Island had a good run. Introduced in 2022 as Apple’s elegant workaround for the Face ID sensor array on the iPhone 14 Pro, it became — depending on who you ask — either a genuinely clever UI trick or a pill-shaped reminder that Apple still hadn’t figured out how to hide a camera.
Either way, it’s gone on the iPhone Fold. Replaced, according to Bloomberg, by a small punch-hole cutout on the outer display.
iPhone Fold without Face ID?
Here’s the thing — Apple didn’t choose to drop Face ID so much as physics made the decision for it. The foldable iPhone’s outer panel is simply too thin to house the sensor array that Face ID requires.
No room; no Face ID. Instead, Touch ID is making a comeback — built into the side button, the same way it works on iPads today and the iPhone SE back in 2022, and that’s not a bad thing.
Anyone who’s unlocked an iPad Pro with a thumb while half-asleep knows it works; no theatrical face-scanning required. Whether iPhone loyalists who’ve spent years waving their face at their phone will adapt quite so gracefully remains, entertainingly, an open question.
What about the foldable’s inner screen?
Apple apparently agonised over this one. Two options were tested for the larger interior screen: an under-display camera that hides entirely behind the panel, and the same punch-hole cutout used on the outside. The under-display approach sounds more impressive — and it is, until you actually try to take a photo with it.
Testing revealed the image quality simply wasn’t good enough, so Apple went with the hole-punch. Pragmatic; slightly anticlimactic; probably the right call.
The punch-hole design isn’t staying exclusive to the Fold. Bloomberg reports the same camera cutout is heading to a touch-screen MacBook Pro later this year — suggesting Apple is standardising the aesthetic across its hardware lineup rather than treating this as a one-off foldable quirk.
The Dynamic Island will still appear on the outer display for system alerts and app monitoring; it just no longer needs to hide a Face ID module behind it.